It’s been 50 years since the idea of the Worrell 1000 was conceived at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. And this year, the event is celebrating “The Spark that Lit the Flame.”
The Worrell 1000 is an offshore long-distance catamaran sailboat race that starts on the shores of Hollywood, Florida, at 10 a.m. Sunday. Sailors will log countless hours over 12 legs that span more than 1,000 miles over the water up the East Coast until the finish line. Racing is scheduled to conclude on the afternoon of May 24 in Virginia Beach.
“It was an East Coast race to begin with,” said Randy Smyth, at the helm of Virginia Beach’s Team Rudee’s boat for the second consecutive race. He has competed in eight previous Worrell 1000s, winning six.
“It kept getting so much press coverage locally — each little town would cover it. Then, a lot of the sailing magazines would cover it. So no matter where you were in the world you lived, you could read about it. It was a story about an event you didn’t have to race in to understand that it’s an over-the-top kind of race. It’s built up that reputation. For anybody that races a beach catamaran and wants a full adventure, this is it.”
Rich history
Over the years, the race has had a tumultuous history. It started as a bet between bar owners and brothers Michael and Chris Worrell, transformed from its original continuous format to daily checkpoint races, and then went into hiatus for 17 years starting in 2002.
This year’s event will be the third time it’s been run in its current format by the Worrell 1000 Reunion Race organizing authority, a 501c3 non-profit, having just three boats compete when it was resurrected in 2019.
“We thought we were going to have five boats, but we only ended up with only three,” said Beverly Simmons, the Worrell 1000 communications director. “It didn’t matter. We had to prove to the world that it could be done.”
That race brought teams from Australia, Florida and Texas, and it again caught the world’s attention. It was scheduled to be held again in 2021, but was postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, 13 teams from six countries competed. Twelve teams finished, and the last was dismasted on the final leg.
This year will be the 23rd running of the race during its 50 years of existence. Twelve teams are again vying for bragging rights with competitors from all over the world, including Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. Smyth and teammate Dalton Tebo will be the crew representing the aforementioned local entry, Team Rudee’s, which finished second in 2022. There is also an entry from North Carolina, Team Outer Banks, comprised of Hardy Peters and James Eaton.
Aside from respect, the teams are also seeking the Ron Anthony Memorial Perpetual Trophy for course record, which is held by Jamie Livingston and Brian Lambert of Team Alexander’s on the Bay, set in 2002 with a time of 71 hours, 32 minutes and 55 seconds.
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‘The clock’s always ticking’
Smyth explained that the Worrell 1000 is not a regatta in the sense where there are multiple races and a team’s score is based on its placement in those races, so a couple of bad finishes won’t be the end-all. It’s a race based on cumulative time.
A team can win 11 of the 12 legs, but if it doesn’t finish a single leg, then that team won’t have completed the entire race. Or if a team wins a number of early legs and then goes six hours behind on a subsequent leg because of going the wrong direction, that can have a huge adverse effect on its total time. It’s much like how the Tour de France is run, which both Simmons and
principal race officer John Williams offered as a comparison.
“Every minute counts because the clock’s always ticking,” Smyth said. “You never know how much time you’ll need at the finish to do well, so that puts pressure on all the teams to always be racing. There’s never a moment when you’re up two minutes on a competitor and thinking I’m going to beat him. No, you’re thinking I need to make this three minutes because every minute counts.”
Smyth, who is also a National Sailing Hall of Fame inductee and an America’s Cup participant and winner aboard Stars & Stripes in 1988, said all the beach catamarans in the race are in the Formula 18s class. A catamaran is a multihull design boat with two pontoons at the waterline with a trampoline for a deck. The Formula 18s distinction signifies that the boats have all the same parameters — same length (18 feet), same sail area and same weight, which also factors in the weight of the two crew members, food and water and safety equipment.
But various manufacturers can build boats with different designs that look and perform differently, which makes for a class that evolves — similar to how auto racing works. With the boats all having similar performance expectations, it’s the skill of the crew and weather and nature conditions that determine the race results.
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‘We know there are going to be stories’
“Every day is so different,” Smyth said. “Florida is a wide beach, so you just go straight to the finish line. Once you get past that, the Georgia coast where there’s a whole bunch of islands or Cape Lookout, Cape Fear and Cape Hatteras, there’s a lot more navigation involved. And some of the longer legs end up being night legs if it isn’t that windy the day of. A lot of the testing for the teams quite often is when you get further up the course closer to the finish line.”
Smyth said each leg averages about 70 miles — a substantially long race for a beach catamaran.
“What really takes you out on the Worrell 1000 is the fact that it’s not a one-day race. Each day is cumulative body damage,” Smyth explained. “Day 2, you’re a little more tired, and then Day 3 and so on. So when you’re dealing with the surf and the shoals around Cape Fear and further when our bodies are tired, that is the test the Worrell 1000 gives you — each day is a little more difficult as you get closer to the finish.”
Things like submarines and marine life can also be unexpected obstacles. Smyth recalled one year a shark hitting the daggerboard (underwater fin that keeps either of the pontoons stable) of a boat he was on and creating a hole in the hull, so the boat started to sink.
Navigating through rough surf on starts and finishes, where boats can break rudders and even tip over, represents even more perils on the water. In 23 tries, every team reaching the finish line has happened just four times.
“We don’t know what the stories are going to be, but we know there are going to be stories,” Smyth said. “You don’t know until you get there that day whether the shoals or sandbars have moved and how you’ll get through them. There’s all kinds of treachery and ways that things can go wrong out there — you can’t put a location in your GPS and get all the answers.”
And although it’s a competition, there’s still a strong sense of community and camaraderie among all the teams. Most of the teams are friends outside of racing. Simmons said the race committee and organizing authority won’t let teams compete if they don’t personally know them or if their credentials to race can’t be vetted by the tight sailing community.
“In 2022, Team Great Britain had a collision at the start and they went over. Every single batten in their main sail was broken,” Simmons said. “They limped to shore. Every single crewman from all the teams magically appeared with tools, sail tape and new battens. And within 15 minutes, they were back out on the course. That’s the spirit of this race.”
And it’s that idea — the spirit of the closeness of the competitors — that keeps the fire burning that is the Worrell 1000 race.
“There were some events that tried to emulate what had been done in the past, but they weren’t coming to Virginia Beach. None of them stuck. It’s just not the same,” Williams said. “There’s a recognition worldwide that this is a one-of-a-kind event. There’s nothing else like it.
“It’s this 1,000 miles that crosses the beautiful beaches of Florida, the graveyard of the Atlantic and the Outer Banks and finishes in the idyllic setting of Virginia Beach. That’s why we get so much international attention and participation.”
